


Drop by drop upon the heart

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: LJ Revolution Secret Santa, Mild non-con, Multi, au after season 1, prisoner-captor relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:23:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The Greek philosophers?  How very Miles of you,” he snorts.  “Way too maudlin for me.” </p><p>Charlie reads Aeschylus and uses it to map the path of her sweet war against her captor, General Monroe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drop by drop upon the heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ILuvMyThesaurus (ImLuvinMyThesaurus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImLuvinMyThesaurus/gifts).



> Happy holidays to Iluvmythesaurus as part of the Secret Santa run by LJ's nbc_Revolution community. I'm combining the essence if not exact setup of several of your prompts, specifically, Charlie being Bass' prisoner in Philadelphia, and Bass' obsession with Charlotte post 1x10. Though you can upgrade that to 'mutual obsession'. With a side of CM2. And smut :D

It's Charlie who stops Flynn, in the end. Not before Nora dies. Not before she has to watch Miles crumble, spirit broken. Not before Monroe dives in front of her, taking the bullet that would have ended her life.

Her crossbow bolt finds Flynn just before Aaron kills the computer. She'll never understand exactly what he did, but it stopped the bombs, so she's thankful. So was Monroe, once he recovered from his bullet wound. He offers Aaron a job, and seems almost offended when the former Rebel spits in his face, demanding he release the Mathesons first.

Charlie, the General explains through gritted teeth, is his guest. Insurance, he concedes, inclining his head in her direction apologetically. Whatever that is, Miles goes quietly when the militia lock down the Tower, only lifting his head to level a long, threatening stare at Monroe.

“I'm not a monster, Miles,” Monroe snaps in answer to the unspoken warning, and she refuses to feel safer, after that. Refuses to believe he might actually be telling the truth, and the hurt in that silken voice might speak of a story she hasn't heard yet.

He likes to tell her stories.

Over dinner, foods she'd never tasted, from the far corners of the Republic. Over whiskey, curled up in the big armchairs in front of the fire in his private library. Over sleepless nights, when she wanders down the hall in her nightgown to find him at the window in his office, staring out into the empty square.

His ghosts live out there, he tells her. They haunt him, and nothing he can ever do will make it up to them. Miles should have pulled that trigger, he mumbles, toasting the apparitions she can't see.

Maybe that was when it started. Pity, she tells herself at first, ignoring the strange jolt she feels every time he brushes her shoulder, or guides her through a door with a hand on the small of her back. Making the best of a bad situation, just the way her Dad had taught her, she reassures herself when she finds herself looking forward to their talks.

It doesn't explain how, as the weeks go by, she finds herself straining for a glimpse of him stomping about the Hall in those high boots, or better still, shirtless and gleaming with sweat as he spars with the officers in the ballroom.

“I'm getting rusty,” she complains, and stamps down her satisfaction when he offers to coach her himself.

He's a good teacher, more patient than Miles, better able to explain himself than Aaron. Surely it's only her ego that makes her want to impress him, that rejoices in taking him down, that leaves her panting and gnawing at her lip when she has her sword to his neck.

“Magnificent, Charlie,” he says, and maybe he means her swordplay, or her tactical skills. Even though she caught him licking his lips as she pinned him, breasts practically in his face. Even if she can feel his eyes on her ass every time she walks away.

Eight weeks to the day they marched out of the tower, he agrees to let her visit Miles and her Mom. Before she can stop herself, she has pressed her lips to his cheek in thanks, and let them linger longer than she knows is wise.

“What has he done to you?” Miles hisses the minute they are reunited, hands greedy as they reach for her through the bars.

“Nothing,” she lies. Just flayed me with the heat in his eyes, and tortured me with distant courtesy. Been unable to disguise his admiration of my mind, or hide his hard-on when we spar. 

“I wouldn't let him touch me.”

(In war, truth is the first casualty.)

*

She dreams about the moment they met. The cold, grey mouth of Strausser's pistol, inches from her face. Her terror, every synapse screaming with life. His eyes, blazing blue as they race from surprise, to admiration, to cool, hard calculation. He was a fallen angel in that moment, heartbreakingly beautiful as he threw the dice on her fate.

Charlie moans a little as her heart starts to pound. 

It's her point of no return, that moment when their eyes met and his head tilts with fascination. Even in her dream, she can maintain the anger, the hate, up until then. Awake, she sorrows, knowing Miles is locked up in maximum security, while she has nothing worse to deal with than her excruciating weekly visits to her mother. She rages, when she finds herself suggesting new ways to pacify the western tribes, or how to shift the burden of taxation. Every day, the stark black uniform reminds her of who he is. What he's done.

At night, he's still the monster under her bed, her father's killer, and yet she dreams of slipping her hand inside that jacket, and releasing the buttons there. Unbuckling the belt, and letting it clatter to the ground. Pressing up against him, skin bared to the scratch of boiled wool. Body bared, for him.

She jolts awake as her body starts to pulse. The library is shrouded in dying candlelight, and the book in her hand shouldn't have triggered anything like that. Philosophy, even it had been the philosophy of war, had seemed … safer than some of the other books on the shelf. A message for him, perhaps.

“The Greek philosophers? How very Miles of you,” he snorts. “Way too maudlin for me.”

When she wrinkles her nose and asks why the slim volume is in his personal library, he guts her with a bitter smile.

“You're in Miles' bedroom, kid. Sleeping in his bed. Sitting in his chair. Reading his books.”

It brings her up short, the reality of General Matheson. A man she's never known, who lived in luxury and read Greek philosophy while doing what even he admitted were terrible things. To connect that man and her Uncle Miles, who nearly died for her, who definitely killed for her … it's jarring.

And yet, she can see her uncle here, reading Aeschylus. Because he talks of tyrants, and battles, and the regrets a warrior can have. Forgiveness, too. And the cancer of hate. Once, she wouldn't have had a clue what any of those things felt like. Now, she's fought alongside Miles, and endured them all.

So has he, something traitorous whispers.

Charlie finds herself staring at the heavy double doors that lead to the General's bedroom, taunting her with their proximity. Guards stand ready at the outer doors, but here, in their inner sanctum, there is no one to know which door she chooses. Right, to her own room, or left, to his. 

She wonders about his bed – perhaps it's narrow and functional, military style. He likes to present himself as the perfect military commander, after all. But for all his straight back and polished boots, she's more familiar with the hedonist he likes to hide. The way his tongue flicks out to chase the drops of whiskey around his mouth. His after-hours sprawl, late at night, in this very chair. 

Her breath roughens as she forces herself to confront her motives. Why choose his favorite chair, when there is another right there, and the couch further round? And if she was examining her behavior, well. She had a pile of books by her bed. And it's been barely a week since she'd opened the pretty, beribboned box and gaped at the glowing colors inside, before shaking herself and swearing she'd never wear it. So how did she get here, hair still wet from her bath, skin perfumed and silky, and oh-so-fucking bare underneath the exquisite silk?

So she wanted him. One healthy human animal to another. Pure chemistry. That didn't mean she was forgetting Dad or Danny, or the war she'd spent nearly a year fighting. Maybe, she thinks, tremulous, she should consider it as opening another front.

A tactical assault. Using the weapons she had available to her. An offensive sortie.

She glances down, letting the silk slide open as she takes inventory. Water droplets glimmer on the slope of her breasts, fuller than they've ever been, yet her belly is still tight with muscle, even after months of good food. She's less tan than she used to be, but the candlelight casts her as a creature of molten gold, skin glowing everywhere it peeps out from the silk. Charlie knows she is a beautiful girl, and has it in her to be a passionate woman. That, right there, is the problem.

Not even her experience at Drexel's, wobbling down the road in sky-high heels and a hooker dress, could prepare her for this seduction. Monroe was paranoid. Had made some sort of compact with her uncle – the one he was probably having tortured right now – not to touch her. Had behaved more or less impeccably so far. And even if she could seduce him, what then? Could she follow through with it, then do what needed to be done? Or is the quicksand that seems to grab her every time she catches him in a stare deeper and stickier than she realises?

Charlie puts her book down and runs a questing hand down her midline. Her legs fall apart on a sigh, her sex glistening wetly in the low light. She's aroused, just thinking about him. There's her quicksand.

But that's in her head, not his, she accepts. She's a distraction, at best, whereas he threatens everything she is. So she'll play the whore, and won't bother trying to convince herself that she's not going to enjoy every minute.

But she's still her father's daughter. And her uncle's niece. Don't hesitate, Miles had taught her. Get in position, strike hard, then get out.

(Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart.)

*

 _Don't hesitate,_ and all she has to do is push herself to her feet and walk over there, so why is she still sitting in this chair? _Get in position,_ and whatever that might be, it's not here, she agonises, head thunking back against the damask of the chair. _Strike hard._ Her breath starts to come faster as even the thought of it crucifies her. She's killed men before, why should this one be different? He's the head of the snake, and she should want to cut it off clean, stamp him into the dirt, do her best to make him suffer, but, but … it hurts so much, it's herself she needs to punish.

Charlie finds herself pulling at her nipples, rougher than any man has touched her, flicking and pinching and twisting with vicious intent. The pain rockets along her nerve endings until she cries out, skin burning, nerves screaming, guilt and shame blasted away. Only sensuality is left, allowing her to soothe the tortured buds with gentle caresses from spit-slick fingers, tiny, featherlight circles with the pads of her fingers that make her shiver and arch her back with the deliciousness of it all. Soon, the ache between her legs becomes so pronounced that it screams for relief, and Charlie surrenders, throwing one leg over the arm of the chair, and bracing the other against the floor as her fingers migrate south.

She gasps to discover how wet she is, arousal having long given way to pure sensuality. Her fingertips slide wantonly as she opens herself to the pleasure, stripping him in her mind as her fingers play proxy for his tongue, his hand, his cock.

“Bass,” she groans as she toys with her clit, not yet ready to let herself come. She wants him fucking her deep when she lets go, and her fingers aren't enough, can't be enough, but if she has to explode shallow and wanting one more time, she'll go mad. So she backs off. Lets her hands drift away from her ravenous sex, toying with her nipples again, stroking her flanks, starting all over again.

She doesn't hear the door open. Simply lifts her eyes on a moan, and meets his, a conflagration of blue.

Monroe is half-dressed, jacket discarded and shirt shucked to reveal the snug undershirt he wears in the winter. It hugs his biceps and chest in a way his uniform never does, and leaves her mouth dry. Then her eyes move lower, to the belt hanging loose around his hips, and the unbuttoned pants, threadbare shorts peeking out the gape.

“Charlotte.” His voice is thick with shock, and he needs to clear his throat twice before he can manage to grit out another word. “Go back to your room. Now.”

He's hard, she notes. Very, very hard, his cock straining the cotton of his undershorts so hard it threatens to burst through. Perhaps he'd heard her, before, and had been standing behind the closed door, listening. Perhaps the sight of her, legs spread, hand sticky, was enough to send him to all-systems-go in a few short seconds.

She didn't really care which. She's so close, so needy, she can't even summon a blush. Just hitch her leg higher over the arm, and make sure he can see how wet she is, how desperate.

“No. Please,” she begs, and she doesn't sound like a general on campaign, or the emotionless spy she'd like to be. Just a girl who wants a man so bad, she's willing to tell herself anything to have him.

“I need to come.”

His eyes darken, and trek their way down her body to where her hand is moving, increasingly desperate to drag some satisfaction from her intractable, infuriating sex. She holds his gaze as she increases the pace, and moans when his own hand moves almost reflexively to his cock. 

They duel, his tattered honor and her dying naivete, his lust for connection and hers for something like control. Then they both lose.

“This is my library. If you're getting off in here, I get to watch,” he growls, stalking over to stare down as she races towards oblivion. All she can do is nod helplessly, even if it's not really what she wants.

Strike hard!

“But I want you to fuck me,” she says baldly, and it's the honesty of it, the look on his face, the bone melting relief of finally having faced this thing that tumbles her over. Her pussy clutches around nothingness and sobs, Charlie's hips arching towards him in a parody of the joining she's begging for, even as her body shudders in long spasms of release.

He watches her without saying a word, or moving a muscle, no longer even touching himself. When her head falls back onto the chair once more, he blinks, as if bringing himself out of a fugue, then takes a step away.

She's not proud of the pathetic little protest that escapes her lips. But it makes him look back, and maybe complete and utter vulnerability isn't so bad when she gets to see the moment his restraint snaps. The way he swallows, raw, furious want stamped in every line of his face as he drinks her in, flushed and sated, but still craving.

General Monroe falls to his knees in front of her, his wild stare eating her up, throwing her straight back into the spiral even before he touches her. His eyes lock with hers as he parts the lips of her sex with one, questing finger, slicking it up and down as if testing just how much she wants this. When Charlie starts to twitch, desperate to drive it into her, he grins, and pulls away, turning his attention to her widespread thighs.

“Patience, Charlotte,” he murmurs, and bends himself to the task of devouring every trace of her orgasm, licking and sucking and biting until she is tugging at his hair, begging him to stop. Start. Whatever.

“My library, my rules,” he teases, but takes pity on her all the same, easing her straight leg over his shoulder to position himself directly over her sex. “Let's see you break them this time.”

Charlie writhes as he blows a long stream of air onto her clit, still so sensitive that it vibrates through her like the cruelest of slaps. He's unmerciful, though, blowing again and again as his fingers trail around her hungry opening, tickling and teasing, but never venturing inside. When she stops trying to evade the streams of air, surrendering to complete and utter sensual overload, he rewards her by plunging his tongue into the cavern of her sex, fucking her furiously for the minute or two it takes to leave her right on the edge. She's filling the air with nonsense, groans and screams and demands and pleas, by the time he scoops her out of the chair and tumbles himself backwards into it, trousers flapping about his ankles as he slams her down onto his cock.

She rides him like Valkyrie, furious and deadly, not quite able to forgive him for making her want him so much. He fucks her like his own personal demon, temptation personified, his downfall in flesh. They come together, as if destiny is laughing at them, shudders and jerks and hot, wet oblivion that leaves them both shell-shocked, unable to move, unwilling to talk.

_Get out,get out, get out._

Not until she does the job, she vows, and it'll probably take weeks of this, to gain his trust. Maybe she's pregnant, now, after this. Could she kill the father of her baby? Probably not, but maybe there's power in that, to help him change.

She drifts off in his arms, and wakes in his bed.

Three nights turn into thirty, and before she can blink, three hundred. They are galloping towards their first Christmas together when things fall apart.

She'd been haggling over antique rifle rumored to have been owned by George Meade when someone had pressed a fancy presentation box into her hand, a note signed with 50 stars nestled into its velvet lining. She takes care to make sure no one tracks her to the address she's given, then allows herself to be blindfolded for the transfer to another site. When she can see again, she recognises a fighter from the stand at Annapolis, a man who helped bury Danny. The past rises up to choke her, and she nearly vomits on his shoes.

She returns to Independence Hall a Rebel once more. Troop movements, gold shipments, weapons dumps, even the location of the new cadet training facilities, she leaks them all. Monroe rages and blusters, and she tugs her fingers through his curls, soothing him, whispering sweet words that turn her stomach with how much she wants to believe them.

No one thinks to strip her of weapons anymore – no one would dare – and when she pouts and entices him into her bed, it's her sword that's within reach. Killing him would be the best gift she could give the Rebels, her conscience insists. Every time she lets him into her body, the Furies taunt her with visions of the bloody corpses of her father and brother. 

Yet still she hesitates.

The betrayal, when it comes, is from a boy who fancies himself in love with her. He'd caught them fucking one night, Charlie screaming her lungs out as Monroe bent her over his desk, and had been determined to rescue her ever since. He'd been stupid enough to try and make contact with the Rebels, and they were stupid enough to think she was on board with his extraction plan.

“After the winter, though. Charlie's working on the storehouse locations,” her handler had let slip, and when Monroe brought in Strausser, it had been all the boy knew to tell.

(This is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.)

*

“Was any of it real?”

Everything, her soul screams. Too much, her conscience bleats. Her mouth, though. All it can manage is a thin stream of sound. “Miles ...”

“Miles put you up to this?”

Her head jerks up in immediate dismay, but it's too late. The monster is loose, eyes glassy with rage as lashes his riding crop against the top of his boot, and for the first time, she's scared of him. He's muttering, anguished, and she hates herself for being jealous, because it's not even about her.

“So this is why, brother. What better way to kill me? Make her everything, make her yours, and then yank it all away. Again. Cruel. Elegant, I have to admit, but so, so cruel. We'll have to add that one to the motto, won't we? Fighting, fucking, and ripping fucking hearts out. Well, Miles. Let's see how your plan plays out up close and personal, because I know a thing or two about you too, brother.”

He drags her up in front of him on his horse, putting the animal into an almost-gallop the minute they clear the gates.

She's been to the prison before, but it's not the relatively cheery visiting room he propels them towards tonight. Instead, they head straight for the cells, the wing where Miles Matheson is considered so dangerous, he is locked away in splendid isolation.

They play chess, Charlie has heard, once a week. There's still a chair there, pulled up to the bars to allow them to play through them.

There will be no chess tonight.

“What were your orders, Miles? Did you tell her how? 'Matheson it up kid, Bass'll be stupid for you!' Did you tell her all the tricks of the trade, huh? That thing you do with your tongue when you suck my cock? When to stick her finger up my ass? How about all the girls we've shared? She know about that?”

Miles uncoils himself from his bed and moves towards the bars like a striking snake. No hard, prison bunk for him, she notes. No pallet, either. His bed looks more comfortable than anything they had on the road, longer and wider than most, taking up a full wall of his cell. It's piled high with blankets and surrounded with stacks of books, many of which she recognises as having come from their own library. Awareness prickles up her spine, trying to tell her something, but she's too focused on the look on his face to pay it any mind.

Cold, remorseless death.

Her heart stops in her chest as she realises her selfishness has lured Bass into doing the one thing Miles will actually kill him for. She'll think about the implications of everything Bass had said later, because priority number one is getting him out alive.

_But they used to …_

She brushes it away with shake of her head and steps closer to the bars. “Miles. It's not what you think. It was me. I needed …” she trails off, realising she's never followed that thought through to its conclusion. Never quite dared to ask why she wanted Bass so badly, why none of the soldier boys who flocked around her could ever win her interest. 

Miles doesn't even take his eyes from Bass to look at her. “You're a kid. He knows better. You're his prisoner, for fuck's sake. My good behavior bond!”

“Don't you mean your sweet little spy, Miles? Tell me, when you were teaching her to fight, were you thinking of this all along? How hot she'd get me? How I never could resist a full-on, balls-out Matheson? How I was so weak, I'd get down on my knees and beg for her pussy? Is that how it happened, Charlie? Was I the one begging?”

She can only shake her head, unable to look at Miles for fear of the disappointment in his face.

“So quiet, Charlie. Nothing to say? You should hear her when I fuck her, Miles. Practically yodels,” Monroe hisses, wrapping a fist in her hair to force her eyes upwards. “Look at him, slut. Let him see who you are now. Rides cock like a champion.” He pauses for effect, but she still doesn't see the accusation coming. “Makes me wonder if you taught her that, too.”

Charlie's boot heels bite into his shins as she reacts to the foulness of his accusation. He bites off a curse then pulls her tight against him, immobilising arms and legs alike. She's expecting fury, so the small, broken voice stops her in her tracks.

“Was bringing me down so fucking important that you were willing to sacrifice your own niece to do it?”

Charlie blinks away the tears of pain and humiliation, and gropes to understand. She wants to confess to Monroe that Miles doesn't see her as a sexual creature, let alone some sort of irresistible honey trap. She needs Miles to know she'd figured out that he'd sent her with Monroe to keep her safe, because despite everything – despite this – he still trusted this man more than anyone else. She moves towards the bars, desperate to make her point, then finds herself slammed up against them, inches from Miles' face.

“Here's me thinking I'm being a good guy, ignoring all those come hither looks. Telling myself she's just a kid, no matter how hard she made things. And believe me brother, it was _hard_.” Bass punctuates his words with a crude thrust, cock stabbing at the curve of her butt, blunt and pointless and purely for show. The little puff of breath that escapes her is mortification, surely.

Miles throws himself against the bars in a bid to push Bass off her, his fury dragging Charlie's gaze to his just as Bass reaches down to scrape his fingernails along the inseam of her jeans. It's pure electric insanity, and she has to watch the doubt flicker over Miles' face as her hips jerk with the pleasure.

“Bass, don't do this. Don't hurt her,” Miles grates, and she doesn't know what she's expecting, but it's not to hear Bass laugh.

“Oh, brother. Hurt her? Really? Nah. That's not what you're thinking about, is it? Be honest with pretty little Charlie,” he taunts, catching her chin in his hand and forcing her to look up into her uncle's face.

“Poor Uncle Miles is worried he'll enjoy watching me fuck you a little too much.”

Monroe drags his tongue up the side of her face, and despite the contempt in his voice, despite the horror in her uncle's face, she thunks her head back onto his shoulder and grinds back onto the hot poker of his cock. He makes a pleased noise and drives his hand straight down the front of her jeans, groaning as he finds her already soaked.

He wrestles her jeans open with one hand as he strokes her, driving her high and fast with the ease of long intimacy. Charlie shuts her eyes to block the world out – Miles. _Miles!_ – and starts to keen as her body tightens. Monroe is chanting in her ear, filthy words of encouragement and praise, and she's so close, so close, that she couldn't help it, she tells herself later. It couldn't have been what he said that made her come so hard.

But the fact remains. He'd dropped the words in her ear, and her entire body had shook at the so-wrong of it. The ridiculous, impossible, perverted skew on their truth.

“That's it, baby. Come for your Uncle Miles. Let him see how hot you are. How wet for me. Maybe a little bit wet for him too? Maybe a lot?” he'd purred, long fingers plunging deep into her sex. They were glistening when he pulled them out, fragrant with the bone-breaking orgasm, and her mouth had fallen into a shocked little circle as her uncle closed his eyes, and dragged in the scent.

Oh. _Oh._

She knows she hasn't imagined it when he opens them again, an apology written in those black depths. He's sorry, they tell her, that he feels that way. He'd have done anything to keep it from her.

But now, everything is changed. All three of them have had their dirty secrets ripped open, exposed to the unforgiving chill of the December night. Maybe it's better that way, the resignation in his face tells her. The wince that follows, the slightest of shrugs, that's something different again. That's Miles deciding to move on.

She's heard them often enough, his mantras. No regrets. Make the best of it. Turn the situation to your advantage. 

Charlie lets the anxiety hiss out of her lungs, and relaxes back into Monroe, a wall of tense muscle behind her. She marks the moment he forgives her, maybe even forgives himself, arms hungry as he folds himself around her, lips in her hair, and when she lifts up to kiss him, tears on his face.

Miles watches, his face a mask she can no longer read. She's not even sure she wants to know what he thinks as she and Bass whisper soft little promises to each other. Her uncle's face is hard and unforgiving, and she's so, so tired of having to nurse everyone's hate.

Especially when it's eating them alive.

(In our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom.)

*

There's a Christmas tree in the downstairs lobby, a huge fir bedecked in glass baubles and tiny candles that fill the cold, draughty space with warmth and light. Bass finds her gazing at it so many times that he orders a smaller tree, decorated just like the giant, for their library.

She's reading Aeschylus again, curled up in the chair opposite his this time, when the stomp of high boots has her putting the book aside and yanking the door open in her eagerness.

His face lights up when he sees her, but she's too shocked to return his wide smile.

“Miles,” she says wonderingly, taking in the too-loose black uniform and the shine of his high, black boots. His hair is shorter, too, and slicked back in a way she's never seen before.

“General Matheson,” her uncle corrects, and she raises an eyebrow in question.

“I'm not him, Charlie. Out there, I couldn't be that uncle you remembered as a kid, and here, with you and Bass – I can't be your Miles. Not really.”

Her confusion must be written all over her face, because Bass ushers him through the door, and locks it behind them. 

“Miles and I have decided to put our differences behind us. We have a country to run,” he says casually, as if it's some small thing, this return of the prodigal. She's no longer mere insurance, Charlie is sure. She has a place of her own here, and Miles knows that. So why has he come back?

Then she remembers what happened at the prison, and how it hadn't just been Bass punishing her, or torturing Miles. Something darker had hummed underneath, sexual currents zapping every which way in a unbreakable circuit. One that still wakes her in the night, heart slamming in her chest and her sex wet. Bass likes to pull her on top of him, after those dreams, and whisper filthy little suggestions that wind her higher and higher before she shatters. She's never sure exactly whose name she'll scream.

So maybe they're not just suggestions. Bass can play it as cool as he likes, but she knows it's always been his fondest dream. The two Generals, side by side again.

In everything, perhaps.

Miles looks about and takes a deep breath as if recommitting his senses to this place, their sanctum. Then he strides to her chair (his chair, she acknowledges) and drops into it, eyes closing for a long second. When he opens them again, the calculation there makes her heart skip in her chest.

“Come here.”

There's no question who the command is for, because Bass is already settling into his own chair, eyes hungry as he waits to see what she will do. And Miles – her uncle Miles, her protector Miles – is unzipping his pants and palming his cock in a way that sets her brain to shrieking.

“Come here, Charlie,” he repeats, the roughness of his voice betraying the battle raging inside. He thinks the darkness has won, but he's forgetting something. He's forgetting her. 

Fuck off, General Matheson, she thinks, and lifts her chin, proud. She looks him in the eye for every one of the four steps she needs to take to sink down at his feet, then tilts her head back to make sure they can keep eye contact as she wriggles closer. Close enough to rest her forearms on his thighs. Close enough to bathe the head of his cock in her hot breath as she sneers up into his face, then breaks out her glowing, glorious smile.

“Uncle Miles,” she insists, holding his gaze for a long moment before bending her head to worship at the altar of everything she never knew she wanted.

The stroke of midnight finds them in Bass' bedroom, an exhausted pile of sated flesh, the woman who will take eventually be elected the first democratic leader of the Monroe Republic crowded tight between her two lovers. Monroe rises at one point, sneaking out of the room to put the finishing touches on his plan.

The next morning, he covers her eyes and guides her into their library, cuddling her to a stop before she trips over the chairs in front of the fire. They've moved, she frowns first, then registers why. There are three of them, now. A new chair – slightly smaller in scale but upholstered to be an exact match to its companions – is sitting square in front the fire, exactly equidistant between the other two.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” Bass croons, and she sinks back into his arms, overcome by the gesture. Breakfast for three is waiting on the sidetable, steaming pots of hot chocolate and coffee sit on the mantlepiece, and Aeschylus, she notices, already sits on the arm of her new chair.

It opens to her favorite of favorite quotes, a hopeful little nugget amidst the durm and strang of _Prometheus Bound_.

“Time, as he grows old, teaches all things,” she murmurs.

(Destiny waits alike for the free man and him enslaved by another's might.)

_fin_


End file.
